Magnetic resonance

Magnetic resonance, absorption or emission of electromagnetic radiation by electrons or atomic nuclei in response to the application of certain magnetic fields. The principles of magnetic resonance are applied in the laboratory to analyze the atomic and nuclear properties of matter.

Electron-spin resonance (ESR) was first observed in 1944 by a Soviet physicist, Y.K. Zavoysky, in experiments on salts of the iron group of elements. ESR has made possible the study of such phenomena as the structural defects that give certain crystals their colour, the formation and destruction of free radicals in liquid and solid samples, the behaviour of free or conduction electrons in metals, and the properties of metastable states (excited states that are long-lived because energy transfer from them by radiation does not occur) in molecular crystals.

Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) of protons was first observed in the United States in 1946 by Felix Bloch, William W. Hansen, and Martin E. Packard and independently by Edward M. Purcell, Robert V. Pound, and Henry C. Torrey. Scientists soon observed NMR in practically all the stable nuclei with nuclear moments greater than zero (about 100 species). Later discoveries with NMR included electric quadrupole effects; an important shift of NMR frequencies in metals; and the splitting of energy levels in liquids resulting from variations in chemical structure and the influence of one nuclear spin on another.

A particle of matter that is spinning about its own axis or moving in an orbit around some external point acts like a gyroscope: it resists forces that tend to change its state of motion. The measure of this resistance is the mechanical angular momentum, which depends on the mass of the particle, its size or that of its orbit, and the angular velocity (the number of revolutions per unit time). The angular momentum is represented by a vector directed along the axis of rotation. An electric charge in such motion creates a magnetic field with strength and direction represented by a magnetic vector denoted μ. This vector, which is proportional to the magnitude of the charge (instead of the mass of a particle), measures the tendency of the charge’s axis of rotation to align itself in the direction of an external magnetic field. The motion of a particle that has both mass and charge is characterized by both of these vectors, which will be collinear but may be oppositely directed, depending on the sign of the charge.

If a bar magnet that is not spinning is placed in a magnetic field, its north pole seeks the south pole of the field, and it comes to rest with its own field aligned with the external field. Work would be required to change its orientation; this means that the system can store potential energy. The energy associated with the magnet depends, therefore, on its magnetic moment, the strength of the external magnetic field, and the angle between the direction of the moment of the magnet and the direction of the external field.

In Figure 1 the magnetic vector μ of a spinning charged particle is depicted as lying along the axis of rotation. The surrounding magnetic field (symbolized by the vector H) exerts a torque that tends to bring μ and H into alignment, but this torque also interacts with the angular momentum vector; the effect of this interaction is to cause the spin axis (and the magnetic-moment vector) to undergo the so-called Larmor precession, that is, to describe a cone about the direction of the magnetic field. According to classical electrodynamics, the frequency (ωL) of the Larmor precession (the number of rotations per second of the vector μ about the vector H) should be independent of the orientation angle (θ). But according to quantum mechanics, the orientation angle of a single particle can assume only certain discrete values because the angular momentum of the particle must be an integral multiple of a fundamental unit of angular momentum. For this reason, a rotating charged particle in a magnetic field occupies one of a limited set of discrete magnetic energy states.

In magnetic-resonance devices, a weak oscillating field (H′) is superimposed on a strong constant field (H), as shown in Figure 1, and its vector rotates with an angular velocity (ω) in a plane perpendicular to the direction of the strong field. If the rate of rotation (ω) of the weak superimposed field is different from the Larmor frequency (ωL) of the precessing particle, the two rotating fields will be out of phase; the axis of the particle will successively be attracted and repelled by the superimposed rotating field during complete revolutions and will wobble only slightly. When they are synchronized, however, a steady force will act on the axis. In this situation, called resonance, the orientation angle (and with it the magnetic energy state) of the particle will suddenly change. When a system is raised to a higher state, energy is extracted from the superimposed field, and vice versa. The use of an oscillating field to produce resonance is sometimes called “driving a resonance.”

Every experiment in magnetic resonance involves detecting the resonance—i.e., ascertaining that the transition has actually taken place. Magnetic resonance (MR) makes use of electromagnetic detection, in which the energy liberated or absorbed in a transition is precisely that which is measured. In an MR spectrometer (Figure 2) the amount of energy extracted from the superimposed field is continuously measured and recorded on a strip chart while the frequency of the field is slowly varied. The resulting record, or spectrum, is ordinarily a straight line—indicating that the sample is absorbing no energy—broken by peaks at the resonance frequencies. Under typical experimental conditions these peaks are so narrow (because the resonances are very sharply tuned) that they appear as lines perpendicular to the flat trace obtained over the ranges of nonresonating frequencies. These so-called magnetic resonance spectral lines are only roughly analogous to the absorption and emission lines observed in optical spectra. The interpretation of MR in bulk matter is considerably complicated by the relationship of the spins with each other and with the other degrees of freedom of the sample. This complication, however, turns out to be an asset rather than a drawback for magnetic resonance, because it is the very existence of these interactions that makes MR such a remarkable tool for the study of bulk matter.

In many kinds of atoms all of the electrons are paired; that is, the spins are oppositely directed and therefore neutralized, and there is no net spin angular momentum or magnetic moment. In other species of atoms there are one or more electrons that are not paired, and it is therefore possible for any of these atoms to acquire or lose various quantum multiples of energy. The same phenomenon occurs in many species of nuclei, so that nuclei can lie in different magnetic energy states.

For magnetic fields of the order of a few kilogauss (gauss is a unit of magnetic intensity; the horizontal intensity of the Earth’s magnetic field is roughly 0.2 gauss) used in MR spectrometers, NMR frequencies fall into the radio-frequency or broadcasting range, whereas ESR frequencies occur in the microwave or radar range. For instance, the proton NMR frequency in a field of 10 kilogauss is 42.58 megahertz, and in the same field the ESR frequency of a free spin is 28,000 megahertz. The number of spins detectable by magnetic resonance varies widely with the applied field, the temperature, the nature of the sample, and for NMR the nuclear species; under the best conditions, it can be as low as 1018 spins for NMR and 1010 spins for ESR.

Nuclear magnetic resonance

In the absence of atomic motion in rigid lattices (crystals), NMR makes it possible to determine molecular structures not observable by other means. In many solids, even at low temperatures, there occur atomic diffusion and rotation of groups of atoms. These movements affect the shape of the NMR absorption peak. A study of these effects as a function of temperature can supplement other physical measurements.

In metals, the nuclei are influenced by an interaction between the spins of the conduction electrons (electrons not bound to atoms that move freely through the metal) and the applied field. This condition results in a shift of the resonant frequency from the value observed for the same nucleus when it is present in an insulator. These so-called metallic shifts provide important information on the magnetic susceptibility, the quantum mechanical wave functions that describe energy states, and the density of states of conduction electrons in the metal. In superconductors, the shape of the NMR spectral peaks provide detailed information on the penetration and internal distribution of the magnetic field. In ferromagnets or antiferromagnets (crystals in which not all electrons are paired), the NMR is influenced by the internal magnetic fields produced by the array of ordered electronic spins. In ferromagnets the shift is a measure of the lattice magnetization; in an antiferromagnet there are at least two shifts that give the magnetization of each antiferromagnetic sublattice separately, a result unattainable by conventional magnetic measurements.

For certain nuclei, the NMR spectrum reveals the existence of nuclear electric quadrupole moments (an electric quadrupole consists of a charge distribution equivalent to a special arrangement of two electric dipoles) that interact with the electric fields that exist at the nuclear sites. These interactions provide information on the microscopic distribution of electric charge around the nucleus.

The most important consequence of the extraordinary sharpness of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) lines in liquids is the possibility of measuring the chemical shifts—that is, the separations between NMR lines from nuclear spins of the same species but in different molecular environments. The physical origin of chemical shifts is the following: an external magnetic field polarizes the closed electron shells of the atoms and produces a small magnetic field, proportional to the external field, which shifts the NMR line with respect to its position for the bare nucleus—e.g., one that is devoid of electrons. The bare nucleus itself is never observed, but the atomic diamagnetic shifts that correspond to atoms located in different molecular sites are slightly different, and it is their differences that produce the chemical shifts. As an example, the proton NMR spectrum of ethyl alcohol, with the formula CH3―CH2―OH, exhibits three peaks, with relative weights or intensities of 3:2:1. In more complicated molecules such spectra contain much chemical information and can help in the determination of unknown molecular structures.

The multiplicity of lines is further increased by the interaction between nuclear spins. As already mentioned in connection with motion narrowing in liquids, the usual magnetic dipolar interactions are averaged out by molecular motion and do not split the NMR spectra. There exists, however, an indirect interaction between nuclear spins, caused by the electrons, that splits the resonance line of a specific nuclear spin into many components.

High-resolution nuclear magnetic resonance has become one of the most prized tools in the fields of organic chemistry and biochemistry. On the experimental side, the requirements to be met by the equipment are severe. In order to match natural line widths of a fraction of a cycle, the applied magnetic fields must have a relative stability and homogeneity throughout the sample better than one part in 108. Special magnets that give uniform fields and are stabilized, devices that twirl samples in order to smooth out the magnetic inhomogeneity, and sophisticated radio-frequency detection equipment are commercially available. The trend toward higher fields (over 100 kilogauss), resulting from superconducting solenoids, improves the resolution by increasing the chemical shift splittings and the signal-to-noise ratio.

The measurement of the precession frequency of proton spins in a magnetic field can give the value of the field with high accuracy and is widely used for that purpose. In low fields, such as the Earth’s magnetic field, the NMR signal is expected to be weak because the nuclear magnetization is small, but special devices can enhance the signal 100 or 1,000 times. Incorporated in existing portable magnetometers, these devices make them capable of measuring fields to an absolute accuracy of about one part in 1,000,000 and detecting field variations of about 10−8 gauss. Apart from the direct measurement of the magnetic field on Earth or in space, these magnetometers prove to be useful whenever a phenomenon is linked with variations of magnetic field in space or in time, such as anomalies arising from submarines, skiers buried under snow, archaeological remains, and mineral deposits.

Electron-spin resonance

In contrast to nuclear magnetic resonance, electron-spin resonance (ESR) is observed only in a restricted class of substances. These substances include transition elements—that is, elements with unfilled inner electronic shells—free radicals (molecular fragments), metals, and various paramagnetic defects and impurity centres. Another difference from NMR is a far greater sensitivity to environment; whereas the resonance frequencies in NMR in general are shifted from those of bare nuclei by very small amounts because of the influence of conduction electrons, chemical shifts, spin-spin couplings, and so on, the ESR frequencies in bulk matter may differ greatly from those of free spins or free atoms because the unfilled subshells of the atom are easily distorted by the interactions occurring in bulk matter.

A model that has been highly successful for the description of magnetism in bulk matter is based on the effect of the crystal lattice on the magnetic centre under study. The effect of the crystal field, particularly if it has little symmetry, is to reduce the magnetism caused by orbital motion. To some extent the orbital magnetism is preserved against ligand fields of low symmetry by the coupling of the spin and orbital momenta.

The total energy of the magnetic centre consists of two parts: (1) the energy of coupling between magnetic moments due to the electrons and the external magnetic field, and (2) the electrostatic energy between the electronic shells and the ligand field, which is independent of the applied magnetic field. The energy levels give rise to a spectrum with many different resonance frequencies, the fine structure.

Another important feature of electron-spin resonance results from the interaction of the electronic magnetization with the nuclear moment, causing each component of the fine-structure resonance spectrum to be split further into many so-called hyperfine components. If the electronic magnetization is spread over more than one atom, it can interact with more than one nucleus; and, in the expression for hyperfine levels, the hyperfine coupling of the electrons with a single nucleus must be replaced by the sum of the coupling with all the nuclei. Each hyperfine line is then split further by the additional couplings into what is known as superhyperfine structure.

The key problem in electron-spin resonance is, on one hand, to construct a mathematical description of the total energy of the interaction in the ligand field plus the applied magnetic field and, on the other hand, to deduce the parameters of the theoretical expression from an analysis of the observed spectra. The comparison of the two sets of values permits a detailed quantitative test of the microscopic description of the structure of matter in the compounds studied by ESR.

The transition elements include the iron group, the lanthanoid (or rare earth) group, the palladium group, the platinum group, and the actinoid group. The resonance behaviour of compounds of these elements is conditioned by the relative strength of the ligand field and the spin-orbit coupling. In the lanthanoids, for instance, the ligand field is weak and unable to uncouple the spin and orbital momentum, leaving the latter largely unreduced. In the iron group, on the other hand, the components of the ligand field are, as a rule, stronger than the spin-orbit coupling, and the orbital momentum is strongly reduced.

The advent of ESR has marked a new understanding of these substances. Thus, it was formerly thought that in the iron group and the lanthanoid group ions of the crystal were bound together solely by their electrostatic attraction, the magnetic electrons being completely localized on the transition ion. The discovery of superhyperfine structure demonstrated conclusively that some covalent bonding to neighbouring ions exists.

With few exceptions, the magnetic moments of imperfections such as vacancies at lattice sites and impurity centres in crystals that give rise to an observable ESR have the characteristics of a free electronic spin. In the study of these centres, hyperfine and superhyperfine structure provide a mapping of the electronic magnetization and make it possible to test the correctness of the model chosen to describe the defect.

The most widely studied by resonance are those of phosphorus, arsenic, and antimony, substituted in the semiconductors silicon and germanium. Studies of hyperfine and superhyperfine structure give detailed information on the status of these impurities.

Free radicals are ideally suited for study by electron-spin resonance. They can be studied in a concentrated form or in very dilute solutions. The sensitivity of ESR is particularly important for the study of very short-lived species. The ESR of free radicals in solutions gives an extreme wealth of hyperfine lines because the magnetic electron is not localized on one nucleus but interacts with several nuclei of the radical.

Combined electron-spin and nuclear magnetic resonances

When a species exhibits more than one resonance, it may be advantageous to study two or more of them simultaneously. In general, this study involves driving one resonance while detecting the other. Thus, an apparatus with two oscillating magnetic fields is employed, one for the driver and the other for the detector. Driving an NMR and detecting its effect on an ESR is known as ENDOR (electron-nuclear double resonance), whereas driving an ESR to increase a nuclear magnetization, observed by NMR, is called DNP (dynamic nuclear polarization).

Electron-nuclear double resonance is mainly used in making accurate measurements of hyperfine and superhyperfine splittings for detailed mapping of electron-spin densities. In the ENDOR method, driving an NMR resonance changes the populations of at least one of the energy levels between which an ESR transition is observable, and thus the strong ESR signal is measurably modified. ENDOR thus combines the sensitivity of ESR with the resolution of NMR. The dynamic nuclear polarization (DNP) method known as solid effect is widely used for making polarized proton targets for nuclear and high-energy physics.

This article was most recently revised and updated by Erik Gregersen, Senior Editor.